Moonlight Angel
by Tiva
Summary: A girl is rescued from a flash flood by a mysterious angel...R


Disclaimer: Just pretend that one is here. See the pretty letters saying that I don't own anything that doesn't belong to me? See them? No one reads these anyway. .

Moonlight Angel

It happened a few years ago, when I was fourteen. No one really knows the truth, because no one believes me. But I know that it took place, just as surely as I know I'm still alive. Aa, I'm sorry—I didn't introduce myself. Please excuse me. My name is Kishiran. 

Oh, you think you might believe my tale? We'll just have to see.

~~*~~

I was at camp that summer, as usual. I'd been going since I was six, so I knew the place pretty well, and my most favorite thing to do there was to go kayaking. It was a beautiful, warm July day, and there hadn't been any rain for a while. Not to mention that it was _hot._ The camp was next to a lake that feeds into a river, so everyone stayed cool by going swimming every day, myself included. 

That day, it was cooler than it had been in a while, so I decided to take advantage of the respite and go down the river. I went to the kitchen to get some lunch, and offhandedly commented to the cook on duty that I was heading out. She said to be back in time for the lighting of the campfire, and I assured her that I would. I didn't know it at that time, but I'd miss the lighting of the fire, and quite a bit more.

As I pushed off the dock, paddle at the ready, I glanced up at the sky. It wouldn't do to be caught away from camp in the middle of a rainstorm. But the sky remained clear, so I steered myself across the lake and into the mouth of the river.

~*~

I made quick progress downstream, letting the current take me, and fending off rocks when I drifted too close. In no time at all, I got to my destination: where a minor tributary branched off from the main river. I pulled up onto the bank to eat my lunch in the shade of a large cliff that provided ample shelter, and a good place to lean against. 

As I polished off my sandwiches, I happened to look up at the sky again. This time, it was far from peaceful. Great, roiling black clouds were tumbling over my head. Even now, it was getting darker.

"Oh, great!"

Being in the shadow of the cliff as I had, my view of the sky to the north had been blocked, and I hadn't seen the approach of the storm clouds until now, when they were right on top of me.

"What an idiot!" I berated myself, as I began lifting the kayak to higher ground. "To not notice a storm until it stares you in the face, real smart, Kishiran!"

At that moment, lightning flashed across the sky. I started counting, and had barely gotten to two when I heard a roll of thunder peal out. 

"Too close. I'd never get back to camp in time!" As I spoke, another flash of lightning lit up the rapidly growing darkness, followed closely by thunder, louder than before.

As I staggered up the slate and gravel under the load of my kayak, I began to hear a roaring sound that grew steadily louder. 

"I hope that's not rain, because if it is, that's one heck of a deluge," I muttered, dropping the prow over a log and shoving the boat into the protection of the trees.

At that moment, a wall of water crashed around the bend in the river, and swamped me, picking me up and tossing me around like driftwood. The last thing I remember before being drug under was seeing the kayak swept away like a toothpick, then swirling darkness. 

~*~

I woke up to absolute black. Not a single spark of light anywhere. This realization became even more frightening when I realized that I couldn't open my eyes.

As I tried to assess my situation, e.g. find out exactly where I was and what was wrong with my eyes, there was a shifting sound from my right, and I went stiff with fright. We'd always been warned about wild animals in camp…what if that sound was one of them?

The noise drew closer, and my shoulder blades tried to dig into the rock beneath me. Needless to say, it didn't work. I felt a breath of warm air touch my face, and nearly screamed. There was a moment of absolute silence, then a rustling of something seating itself next to me. What happened next was totally unexpected. What I had taken for a wild animal, spoke.

"Are you conscious?"

It surprised me so much that I almost forgot to answer. Finally, I managed to say, "Yes! Yes, I am!"

"I see."

More silence. I began to feel distinctly uncomfortable. It was getting cold, and I assumed that night was quickly falling. 

"Can you move?"

"Er…" I tried to sit upright, and hissed as my right leg protested strenuously against that course of action. "I think my leg is broken."

"Your leg," said the mysterious voice. I couldn't tell if it was male or female, for it was a quiet, husky alto that could have belonged to a man or a woman. "I will get something to splint it. Try not to disturb it." There was a strange 'whoosh' sound, a gust of wind, and then total silence, save the sounds of the forest.

~*~

I think that I passed out right then, because when I opened my eyes again, I was sitting upright against a hard surface. There was warmth by my feet, and I had been around long enough to recognize a fire when I heard one. I shifted slightly, since my rear end had fallen asleep, and heard someone kneel next to me. 

"So you're awake now. I'll splint your leg then."

"Why didn't you do it when I was unconscious?"

"Is that the way you would prefer to wake up?"

"Oh. Not really."

I felt hands touching my leg lightly, just above my knee , where it was broken, then a soft huff. "Why must clothes be made so awkwardly…?" In a louder voice, "I'm going to have to cut your pant leg. Don't move." 

"Like I could."

The person grunted, but made no reply. After a slight pause, I heard a tearing sound, and felt the cloth fall away from my skin. Then, gentle fingers felt along the break, and found the best place to grip. "This will hurt."

And it did. I nearly bit through my tongue, as the person set the bone with a sickening snap. But it was over quickly, and the break was bound up skillfully with what felt like a couple pieces of driftwood, and some cloth. I winced as they tied off the bandage in a tight knot. "Thanks a lot. I couldn't have done that without looking. Do you know what's wrong with my eyes?"

A sound much like a sigh, then "They're gashed. When the wound heals, you should be able to see. You were…lucky."

"I think I was more lucky that you found me! Where are we now?"

"A few miles down the river. You were washed quite a ways."

I groaned softly. "They're probably worried sick about me." Moving my head to the sound of the person's voice, I raised my hand carefully. "My name's Kishiran. What's yours?" There was an infinitesimal pause, then my hand was taken by one that was warm and soft, but incredibly strong. I could tell by the way their hand gripped mine firmly, but at the same time gingerly, as if afraid they might break my fingers. 

"Yue."

My hand was released, and as I tracked Yue's progress in front of me, I asked, "Are you a man or a woman?"

An affronted silence greeted my question, and I started to worry that I'd insulted my savior. Yue sighed, then said "Man."

"Oh." There was an uncomfortable pause, then Yue knelt next to me again, and pushed a bowl and spoon into my hands. 

"Here. You need to eat."

"Thanks." I sipped hesitantly, for the liquid was hot. It was slightly spicy and had a tang to it I couldn't identify. But, not being one to question food, I quickly downed it.

"That was really good! Do you cook a lot?"

"No."

Oh. So he wasn't a talker. Well, I could talk enough for both of us.

"I'm not really that good of a cook. Whenever I try to make something, I always end up setting off the smoke alarm—Hey! What are you doing?!" He had picked me up, and was cradling me like I weighed nothing! Now, I'm not exactly a slender person. I've always been athletic, and I was maybe 140, 145 pounds. But he was carrying me like a baby! I clutched at his arm to steady myself, and blinked, feeling his bicep clearly through the fabric of his…tunic, shirt, whatever the strangely cut outfit was that he was wearing. Well, that explained the ease with which he lifted me…but he didn't seem to be built heavily. On the contrary, as he walked a few steps, his movements seemed almost weightless. I heard him move his head, and guessed that he was looking down at me from the way his voice reached my ears so clearly.

"We have to move on. Your injuries are too severe to stay here for the night, and I have to move you to a drier place."

"Ow…" The injuries he spoke of were starting to make themselves known again, and I winced. "Should you really be moving me?"

"Do you really want to be underwater come morning?"

"Not really."

"Then I have to move you. Once the floodwaters fully subside, the river will cover all of this place."

"Why don't you take me to camp?"

Yue was quiet for a moment, and a horrible feeling crept over me. 

"Oh no…"

"Your camp is gone." He sounded resigned, almost as if disasters like that happened all the time around him.

"What about all the people?!" My voice was tight with panic.

"They got out in time."

I allowed myself to relax, and for some inane reason, my body chose that moment to fall asleep.

~*~

When I woke up again, I was flat on my back, lying on what felt like a leaf bed with a few twigs mixed in. It was also incredibly cold. Like, freezing cold. As in, if I could have seen, I would have seen my breath. I started to shiver.

"Brrr…"

A soft noise to my right made me perk up. "Yue? Are you still there?"

"Yes."

"I thought that you might have left."

"No."

I thought for a moment. If he hadn't left, then that meant he was looking out for me. Why? His voice interrupted my musings.

"You're cold."

"Yeah…a little." I sneezed several times, against my will.

The next thing I knew, he had walked over to me and had picked me up again. Sitting down cross-legged, he set me in his lap, one arm supporting my back, and wrapped a sort of cloak around me, cocooning me in a ball of warmth. I was too surprised to say anything, so huddled against him, still shivering every now and then. Eventually, I found my voice.

"You know, my parents would flip if they knew I was spending the night out in the woods with a guy."

The indignation that radiated from him at my implication was priceless. "Perhaps I shouldn't have pulled you out of the water."

"I was kidding! But really, they're probably worried." I sighed, leaning my head against his chest. The side of my skull encountered something hard and smooth, and I lifted a hand to investigate. It was round, and felt glass-like. Yue answered my unspoken question in a voice that spoke of exasperation with inquisitive girls.

"My gem."

I traced the edging curiously with my finger. "Gem? Really? It's awfully big."

"Not really." He didn't seem inclined to elaborate, so I didn't press the matter. I was nice and warm now, with the cloth wrapped around me, and growing sleepier by the second, therefore not too eager to get on his bad side. 

"Yue…"

"Mm?"

"…are you going to leave me out here?"

"No." He sounded slightly surprised that I would even ask such a thing. "I'll take you home tomorrow morning."

"Oh…ok then…Thanks a lot."

It didn't occur to me at the time to ask why Yue couldn't take me back now. 

~*~

I woke up in slow stages, my senses coming to life gradually, sending me information about who I was, and so forth. The first thing I realized was that I was extremely comfy warm, albeit slightly cramped from sleeping in one position all night. Next, came the minor adrenaline shock as I figured out I was half-sitting, half-laying in someone's lap. Quick on the heels of that, came the information that I was being gently rocked back and forth, and my ears supplemented that someone was humming. I took a moment to analyze that.  

It was a slightly dirge-like tune that sent shivers down my spine. The sort of melody that you felt if you went to sleep while listening to it, you'd wake up in a dark, dark room with someone cackling madly over you…all right, I admit it. I have an active imagination. But it was seriously, very eerie sounding.

As I stirred, both the humming and the rocking stopped like someone had flicked a switch. Well then. This Yue must have a secret soft spot he didn't want anyone to know about.

I tried to open my eyes hopefully, but wasn't able to. My eyes couldn't have healed in such a short time, but I could hope. 

"Drat."

"You're awake." 

"Sorta…" I yawned, and stretched, then blinked as my hand collided with something hard. Yue grunted softly, and pushed my hand down. "Oh, sorry. Was that your chin or something?"

"Yes."

"Oops. Did I hurt you?"

"It would take more than that to hurt me," said Yue, sounding scornful. 

"Hmm. You must be pretty tough, huh?"

The man made no reply. Instead, he shifted his grip around me, and stood up, sliding easily from a sitting to a standing position with me still curled up the same way I had been. "Hold on."

"To what? You?"

Yue sprang up into the air, and as my stomach dropped through my spine, I decided that holding on to him was a very good idea in the given circumstances. I wrapped my arms around his neck in a deathgrip, burying my face in his shoulder.

"What's going on?!" 

"If I tell you, you'll freak out."

"I'm already freaked out!!"

"We're flying."

"WE'RE WHAT?!"

But as my insides reconciled themselves to this new development, I started to relax, and ventured to raise my head and loosen my chokehold on his neck. The wind blew strongly in my face, whipping my hair every which way. Then I realized that some of the hair wasn't mine. My hair is closely cropped, whereas this stuff felt like it was a foot and a half long. It surrounded my head in a nimbus-like cloud—I could feel it hitting against my head on all sides.

"Ptha, ptui!" Spitting a few strands out of my mouth, I glanced up towards Yue's head, or at least in the general direction. "Does all this hair belong to you?"

"Yes." In a quick motion that nearly gave me a heart attack, he momentarily shifted his grip so that he was holding me with only one arm, brushed the hair back, away from my face, and resumed his normal position.

It took me a minute to get my heart back under control. "Do…Do you carry people often?"

"Not really."

"Well, it's kind of nerve-wracking when you can't even see and the person who's carrying you suddenly is supporting you with one arm less than before!"

"Mm."

I sighed and leaned my head against him again. He didn't seem to be very receptive to other people's feelings. Either that, he just didn't care.

Investigating the gusts of wind that were blowing over me, I lifted my hand to feel carefully up his arm, to his shoulder, then to his back. My fingers encountered something downy soft, but resilient. He twitched slightly. 

"What is that?"

"My wings."

"You have—" I moved my hand slowly along the feathers, feeling the strain and pull of the muscles in them as Yue flew. "Wow, you have wings…What are you?"

He didn't answer.

~*~

In a short amount of time, Yue landed lightly on the ground, and walked a few paces with cat-like grace. Listening to the sound of his feet, I deducted we had just walked across a lawn, and were now on a porch. He set me down gently in a wicker chair that I recognized at once. 

"I'm home! You brought me home! But how?"

"You knew it as home. I went there," he said cryptically. He would have turned to leave, but I managed to grab his arm, and tugged on it slightly. 

"Yue…"

He half turned—I could feel the motion through his arm, and I assumed he was looking down at me. Then, without a word, he knelt. 

"I'd…I can't see right now, but I want to remember what you look like. Could I…?" I didn't know how to put it without seeming silly, but I wanted to keep a picture in my head of the mysterious man that had rescued me. I already had a half-formed vision of him. He was tall, slender, and strong, with great wings, and exotically tailored clothes. But his face was a blank. Other than when I'd clouted him on the chin, I'd never been able to touch it.

Yue was silent for a few seconds, then rested one hand lightly over mine. "Are you sure you don't want to forget me? No one will believe you if you say that you were rescued by a person with wings. I can erase your memories…make you think that you got back home on your own."

I recoiled in shock. "No! I don't ever want to forget you! I don't care if no one believes me, _I_ know it's true!" Why would he even say such a thing? I didn't understand.

"Very well. It is your choice." He picked up both of my hands and placed them lightly against his cheeks.

Tentatively, I brushed my fingers along his jaw, feeling the sharp angle, then moved to his nose, which was almost aristocratic in the way it curved. Carefully, I touched his eyebrows, noticing how they arched up, different from mine. His eyelids fluttered slightly, reacting reflexively to the closeness of my hands, then closed. The lashes were thick, and I imagined that he was one of those guys that the girls were always jealous of, with their long, dark eyelashes. The contours of his face added to that picture. It was heart-shaped, framed with soft bangs that I guessed, from their length, covered his eyes. As my I moved my hands over the top of his head, I marveled at how silky his hair was. He must use a really good shampoo or something. And the hair was long. I traced it as far down his back as I could reach, but didn't find the end. All in all, it was a prima donna image that assembled in my mind.

Dropping my hands into my lap, I lowered my head, a slight blush staining my cheeks. "Thanks…" He stood without a sound, and padded over in the direction I identified as the door. A moment later I heard the doorbell. He moved back over to me, touched my cheek lightly in farewell, then I felt a gust of wind, and he was gone.

"Bye, Yue…" 

My mom came to the door, and nearly went into hysterics when she saw me sitting calmly on the porch with my leg in a splint and a gash over my eyes. She called the police to tell them that I'd been found, then called the hospital to get me treated. In less than an hour, my leg was in a proper cast, the gash had been bandaged, and I was enthroned in a hospital bed to be tested for some strange things, like hypothermia and so forth. No one listened when I said that a man had taken care of me, and that they didn't need to worry. Figured. It was just like Yue said.

~*~

A few nights later, I was at home, sitting up in bed. For some reason, I couldn't sleep. Maybe it was because they'd finally taken off the bandage over my eyes, and I could see again, so I wanted to look as much as possible. It's funny, but you don't know how much you'll miss something until you lose it. 

I was staring around at the familiar surroundings of my room, when I heard a noise at the window. This in itself was strange, since my bedroom is on the second floor. But the moonlight reflecting off and through the glass made it hard to see outside. I started to dismiss the sound as a moth or something, when the moonlight on my floor began to move. Not just fade, like if a cloud obscured the moon, but actually glow and start to rise from my floor. I sat and watched.

In a few moments, it had formed into a roughly person-like shape, and a few more seconds allowed it to sharpen. A voice, low and familiar, made me start.

"Close your eyes."

Figuring that if the person could take form from moonlight, it wouldn't do any good to call for help because there would be nothing anyone could do, I obeyed. I heard footsteps come near my bed, then felt a hand take mine and raise it. My fingers brushed against a familiar face, and my eyes flew open. 

"Yue!"

"Shh," he cautioned. "You don't want to wake your parents."

"Yeah…" I stared up at him. He was pretty much like I had envisioned him, but as for colors…He was moonlight. That was as much as I could make out of it. His hair was white, his clothes were white, purple and blue, his face was so pale as to be white…in fact, the only dark things about him were the accents on his robe, his gem, and his eyes. They were indeed elegantly lashed, and his irises were an eerie icy-blue color. Oh, and he had slit pupils. 

Yue smiled ever so slightly at my wide-eyed expression. "I wanted to make sure you were recovering."

"I am!" Remembering his warning, I lowered my voice. "The doctor says I should get my cast off in another four weeks, and as you can probably see, the cut over my eyes is healing pretty fast too. It's all thanks to you that I'm in such good condition."

"And has anyone believed you?"

"Nope. But I don't mind. I know you're real."

He raised an eyebrow. "Are you positive. Perhaps I'm a concoction that your feverish mind dreamed up. Perhaps you're dreaming right now."

"Nope. I just scratched myself, and I didn't wake up. Moreover, it hurt. I'm awake, and you're real."

With a sigh, Yue stood. "You're a persistent girl."

"Yep." I grinned up at him, and he smiled, just a little, in reply. 

"I must leave now."

"Thank you for coming to check up on me."

He nodded, and walked over to the patch of moonlight. As his form started to dissolve into glowing blue streamers, I sat up straight. "Wait! You never told me! What _are_ you?"

"I?" He was disappearing fast. "I…am…a moonlight angel." With that, he was gone.

"Moonlight," I murmured softly, staring at the patch of softly shining light on the floor. "My moonlight angel."

I always regarded the moon with a certain fondness after that.

~*owari*~

A/N: Oh, I know, I'm hopeless. You don't have to tell me. In case anyone was wondering, Kishiran can be broken down into 'kishi' for 'shore' and 'ran' for 'orchid.' So, her name is 'shore orchid.' No, Kishiran is not a self-insert…any resemblance between her and me is entirely my subconscious's fault. ^-^'  


End file.
